Merlin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
youjustgot) wrote2023-05-02 12:58 am
youjustgot) wrote2023-05-02 12:58 am
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WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, MERLIN. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 135.18.129.14 *** Merlin has joined 135.18.129.14 <merlinofcourse> ⌁˚⊹ You have reached Prince Merlin ⊹˚⌁ <merlinofcourse> I know how to use computers now~ | ||||
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[She means it, too. Getting Hanna a gift didn't feel right. She gets him things all the time, anyway— things she'd like to see him wear, little joke gifts too, and he also likes to exchange things with her. That's not special enough.
What Merlin's suggested, though? That might do it.
Maya pumps some more conditioner from a bottle behind her, and starts to work it through Merlin's mane more.]
You really think that would work?
[Of course he does, or he wouldn't suggest it otherwise. But there are things that make her wonder, sometimes, if she can really get through to Hanna that he's important to her...]
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Oh absolutely.
[Was there any doubt?]
Hanna is...constantly questioning himself, he wants to feel like you truly want him with you. And I...can't imagine any better way than spending THE day of love with him and him alone.
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[She pauses again, though, before paying particular attention to what isn't-quite-yet-but-could-become-a-knot. With the conditioner, the tangle is combed through easily, after Maya massages it between her fingers.]
Do you... know why he feels that way?
Does he talk to you about me?
[Maya and Hanna, after all, talk to each other about him.]
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Low self-esteem.
[Merlin says it so matter-of-factly while he examines his claws.]
His mindset is like the exact opposite of mine, I guess you could say. Where I believe I'm great and people can't get enough of me, Hanna struggles with the idea that anyone wants to hang around him at all and seems to think we just humor him half of the time. Which is...absolutely ridiculous, but the mind is a cruel creature.
You're doing wonderfully, by the way. [He's referring to the almost-knot.] I appreciate that you didn't tug, well done.
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I used to do this a lot.
[There's some kind of strange, hollow melancholy in the way she says that, but as always, Maya moves on without leaving Merlin any time to contemplate it.
There's a part of her that sees now that... She and Hanna really are so similar. But so are she and Merlin; just like him, she's not about to admit her low self-esteem.
She does, however, reach over to grab something and then tap Merlin's nails with a brush that appears to be just for the purpose of cleaning claws, a wordless suggestion.]
...I guess I didn't see it before.
[ When he'd asked her out in the first place, Maya had been scared... for a lot of reasons. They were so similar. They got along so well. And worse than that, Hanna said the very same things Dandy had— albeit in his own goofy, nerdy way. Maya'd been so terrified that she'd made him feel that way, manipulated him into it with her mermaid wiles. And she'd missed it, too— sure, she knew he'd admired her, but she hadn't noticed it had become something real until he'd said so.
She'd worried she'd wanted not to be alone so badly that she'd suckered the first person who'd really seemed to like her in a while without question into.... well, worshipping her.
But things had gone well since then, and Hanna still seems to feel the same. So that hesitation he'd shown when he'd asked her out— was it really because she'd manipulated him? Or... did he actually feel he wasn't worth dating in the first place?]